The image at the top comes from the Intellectualist Substack, but the numbers are from France-based Reporters Without Borders:

Reporters Without Borders (RWB) is an international non-profit organisation governed by principles of democratic governance. We are neither a trade union nor a representative of media companies.

Founded in 1985 in Montpellier by four journalists, RSF is at the forefront of the defence and promotion of freedom of information. Recognised as a public interest organisation in France since 1995, RSF has consultative status with the United Nations, UNESCO, the Council of Europe and the International Organization of Francophonie (OIF).

The United States is continuing to drop in global press freedom rankings. Of course, it’s easy to blame the current presidential administration, but we think it goes way beyond that. U.S. journalism isn’t failing its readers because the administration of the Orange Menace is giving reporters a hard time. There were plenty of other situations in the past where journalists were under fire for reporting on things the government didn’t want people to know the truth about. Look at Watergate or the Snowden Files, both of which came to light because of hard working and dedicated newsrooms.

A key reason for the drop is local news is being ravaged by corporate owners who are looking for ways to drive up the stock price, or hedge funds that are looking at ways to neuter news organizations by firing journalists and stripping down their holdings to bare bones so they can collect their bonuses at the end of the year. Simply put, politicians alone aren’t killing journalism. Greedy capitalists are.

Practically every day, we see another news organization close, because paying dividends to shareholders and ensuring bonuses for top executives is more important that paying covering issues on the national, state and local level. There are places throughout the country that are news deserts with no local newspaper, television station or website focused on current events in their communities.

We’ve already noted the fake enthusiasm of the WDRB/WAVE television consolidation of their Louisville newsrooms, played off by executives as “creating a single, comprehensive destination for viewers,” when in fact it’s a way to cut staff with excuses that “we already have a person covering this subject, we don’t need two.”

Then we have news organizations that have decided anything that will upset readers is bad reporting, even though issues not being reported can be life and death matters. For example, the major issue today is the growth of artificial intelligence and the threat it poses to humanity.

This is on the home page of the Washington Post: Leaders at Anthropic, OpenAI and Google endorsed slowing down AI development and have been discussing the creation of a new safety body.

This is on the home page of the New York Times: Federal projects are rolling out A.I. agents that offer therapy and prescribe medicine, raising concerns about safety and the influence of investors.

But what can we expect in our local news organization? Look at this sorry excuse for a home page, just captured seconds ago:

Our country is collapsing, and these are the issues the Courier Journal believes are the most important things to tell their readers.

And let’s note that in Lexington, the Herald Leader, which seemed to be one of the few places dedicated to important news coverage, is going through its own blood bath. The hedge fund that owns McClatchy (an umbrella for news organizations throughout the country), is slashing journalists like it’s Leatherface in “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.”

This statement from the Kentucky AFL-CIO shows how misguided McClatchy’s action is:

So what do McClatchy executives say?

Greg Farmer, McClatchy’s executive vice president of local news, was blunt in an email to the chain’s newsrooms: “We cannot continue investing where subscriber interest does not support the investment,” he wrote. McClatchy will instead invest in journalism that “is differentiated, consequential and difficult to replicate; reporting rooted in our communities and strengthened by sources, investigation, verification, context and judgment.” … He added that McClatchy remained “deeply committed” to local journalism.

That is such a bullshit statement. He’s saying “we’re firing journalists to give you better journalism.”

I’d say I’m being too harsh, but a former colleague of mine at the San Francisco Chronicle had this to say: “If the Pulitzer Prizes had a category for most insincere statement following a massive nationwide newsroom layoff (https://bit.ly/3TtfBgg), this fellow would win hands down.”

So America is sinking in press freedom. And the way things are going, we’re going to keep sinking, because the First Amendment takes a back seat to corporatists greedily grabbing the last dollar they can extract from their media holdings.

So, how do we rank?

GLOBAL SCORE

1 Norway 92.72

2 Netherlands 88.92

3 Estonia 88.54

4 Denmark 88.47

5 Sweden 87.61

6 Finland 86.22

7 Ireland 85.93

8 Switzerland 84.83

9 Luxembourg 84.14

10 Portugal 83.71

11 Czechia 83.01

12 Iceland 82.77

13 Liechtenstein 82.62

14 Germany 82.17

15 Lithuania 81.34

16 Belgium 81.17

17 Latvia 81.00

18 United Kingdom 79.45

19 Austria 79.43

20 Canada 78.76

21 South Africa 77.95

22 New Zealand 77.38

23 Namibia 76.97

24 Fiji 76.76

25 France 76.68

26 Jamaica 75.87

27 Poland 75.52

28 Taiwan 75.44

29 Spain 75.42

30 Timor-Leste 75.29

31 Moldova 74.77

32 Trinidad and Tobago 74.70

33 Australia 74.58

34 Suriname 73.20

35 Seychelles 73.04

36 Slovenia 72.88

37 Slovakia 72.71

38 Costa Rica 72.35

39 Ghana 72.20

40 Cabo Verde 71.98

41 Montenegro 71.80

42 Mauritius 70.92

43 Gabon 70.57

44 Dominican Republic 69.73

45 North Macedonia 69.49

46 Gambia 69.42

47 South Korea 69.12

48 Uruguay 68.72

49 Romania 67.71

50 Armenia 67.02

51 Tonga 66.62

52 Brazil 66.37

53 Croatia 66.31

54 Côte d’Ivoire 66.27

55 Ukraine 66.10

56 Italy 65.16

57 OECS 64.60

58 Liberia 64.54

59 Samoa 64.53

60 Andorra 63.91

61 Mauritania 63.36

62 Japan 62.90

63 Botswana 62.89

64 United States 62.61

65 Panama 62.14

66 Belize 61.66

67 Malta 61.44

68 Congo-Brazzaville 61.21

69 Malawi 60.96

70 Chile 60.84

71 Bulgaria 60.28

72 Comoros 60.23

73 Papua New Guinea 60.11

74 Hungary 59.85

75 Qatar 59.79

76 Guyana 59.58

77 Zambia 58.58

78 Senegal 58.11

79 Sierra Leone 57.06

80 Cyprus 56.91

81 Central African Republic 56.73

82 Northern Cyprus 56.57

83 Albania 56.52

84 Kosovo 55.89

85 Mongolia 55.79

86 Greece 55.05

87 Nepal 54.80

88 Paraguay 54.67

89 Lesotho 54.37

90 Bosnia-Herzegovina 54.29

91 Bolivia 54.25

92 Thailand 53.97

93 Chad 53.90

94 Equatorial Guinea 52.79

95 Malaysia 52.73

96 Brunei 52.58

97 Togo 52.56

98 Argentina 52.44

99 Mozambique 52.27

100 Guinea Bissau 51.99

101 Eswatini 51.94

102 Colombia 51.66

103 Madagascar 50.95

104 Serbia 50.79

105 Morocco/Western Sahara 50.55

106 Kenya 50.51

107 Haiti 50.32

108 Maldives 49.23

109 Angola 48.82

110 Burkina Faso 48.52

111 Guinea4 8.45

112 Nigeria 48.11

113 Benin 47.39

114 Philippines 46.79

115 Lebanon 46.49

116 Israel 46.46

117 Tanzania 46.22

118 South Sudan 46.16

119 Burundi 46.14

120 Niger 46.02

121 Mali 45.63

122 Mexico 45.23

123 Singapore 44.57

124 Zimbabwe 44.37

125 Ecuador 44.37

126 Somalia 43.84

127 Oman 43.67

128 Guatemala 43.21

129 Indonesia 43.02

130 Democratic Republic of the Congo 42.16

131 Uganda 41.98

132 Honduras 41.02

133 Cameroon 40.88

134 Sri Lanka 40.77

135 Georgia 40.77

136 Kuwait 40.44

137 Tunisia 40.43

138 Libya 40.34

139 Rwanda 39.58

140 Hong Kong 39.49

141 Syria 39.44

142 Jordan 39.33

143 El Salvador 38.88

144 Peru 37.86

145 Algeria 37.38

146 Kyrgyzstan 35.06

147 Uzbekistan 34.95

148 Ethiopia 34.66

149 Kazakhstan 34.41

150 Bhutan 33.50

151 Cambodia 33.28

152 Bangladesh 33.05

153 Pakistan 32.61

154 Laos 32.54

155 Tajikistan 32.22

156 Palestine 32.09

157 India 31.96

158 United Arab Emirates 30.86

159 Venezuela 30.48

160 Cuba 29.22

161 Sudan 29.02

162 Iraq 28.85

163 Türkiye 27.94

164 Yemen 27.89

165 Belarus 27.72

166 Myanmar 26.38

167 Djibouti 25.04

168 Nicaragua 24.98

169 Egypt 24.92

170 Bahrain 24.84

171 Azerbaijan 23.95

172 Russia 23.15

173 Turkmenistan 23.06

174 Vietnam 21.15

175 Afghanistan 19.51

176 Saudi Arabia 19.11

177 Iran 17.45

178 China 13.85

179 North Korea 12.67